TV Worth BloggingAn insider's view of public television programming and the issues that help determine what and how you watchhttp://will.illinois.edu/tvworthblogging/rss/
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Sundays Will Be Timey-Wimeyhttp://will.illinois.edu/tvworthblogging/post/sundays-will-be-timey-wimeyIf you're a super-fan of our Sunday night British dramas&nbsp;you may have heard that, on occasion, the PBS version of a given episode hasn't included&nbsp;a scene that was part of the&nbsp;original United Kingdom broadcast.&nbsp;
Why does that happen? Well, it's due to one of those cultural differences about England that we Americans find so quaint. You know, like driving on the wrong side of the road, or saying "pants" to mean "underwear." In this case, it's their&nbsp;casual indifference to starting TV&nbsp;programs at the top and bottom of the hour.&nbsp;
Here's a typical Sunday night schedule on BBC One.&nbsp;
As you can see, a program might start at 7:45, or 11:40 pm. It could be 55 minutes,&nbsp;or 75, or even&nbsp;10 minutes long. And those running times don't include commercials, because the BBC doesn't have any. So, that 55 minute show really is 55 minutes, which can be a problem when they try to sell it abroad.&nbsp;
In the United States, an hour-long show on a commercial TV station actually runs about 40-42 minutes, the better to include plenty of ads for medicines with long lists of potential side-effects. The standard length of a PBS program is about 57 minutes, though the actual program content is more likely 54-55 once elements such as national funders and Masterpiece host segments are factored in.
Now, some British dramas are intentionally produced to a typical commercial TV length in order to better sell them abroad, but even those may have special, longer episodes at Christmastime.
All of this is to explain why PBS has at times had to edit shows in order to fit them into an hour time-slot on American television. But that's going to change later this month, as PBS has announced that they will be allowing their Sunday dramas to run their natural lengths.&nbsp;Beginning March 29 with the season premieres of&nbsp;Call the Midwife and Mr. Selfridge, you're going to see programs starting at odd times.
Call the Midwife will air on WILL-TV at 7:00 pm, but the episodes will&nbsp;run about 63 minutes each. Mr. Selfridge will begin at 8:05 pm local time. (Selfridge runs short of an hour, so it will fit neatly into the remaining portion of its time slot.)&nbsp;And when the new miniseries Wolf Hall begins on April 5 at 9:00 pm, that first episode will be 67 minutes long. (Subsequent episodes will be closer to 65 minutes.)
If you're recording these programs for later viewing, you may need to take care to ensure that you don't miss anything. Since these timings will be standard across the nation, many of the electronic program guides that tell your DVRs when to start and end a recording will know to leave a little extra time. But I wouldn't count on that. Just to be safe, I'd suggest manually&nbsp;adding perhaps 10 minutes to the timer for both Midwife and Wolf Hall.http://will.illinois.edu/tvworthblogging/post/sundays-will-be-timey-wimey
Thu, 19 Mar 2015 07:00:00 -0500{pre_genre}Media and journalismThe History of Britcoms on WILL-TV (Part Two)http://will.illinois.edu/tvworthblogging/post/the-history-of-britcoms-on-will-tv-part-twoNo Britcom history could be written without paying homage to its grande dame, Penelope Keith. She came to the attention of Central Illinois viewers in February&nbsp;1980 with the debut of Good Neighbors. The series aired in the U.K. under the title The Good Life, but was renamed to avoid confusion with a long-forgotten American sitcom. (By the way, Good Neighbors will be one of the &ldquo;All-Stars&rdquo; competing in this Saturday&rsquo;s Great Britcom Vote on WILL-TV!)
The indomitable Keith returned in the next Britcom to air on WILL, To the Manor Born. Locally, it premiered in May&nbsp;1981. It has, of course, been a perennial part of our schedule, wrapping up its most recent run in January of this year.
Soon, new British comedies were arriving rapidly, including a batch that you might barely remember, if at all. They included Not the Nine O&rsquo;Clock News (WILL-TV premiere: December&nbsp;1981), a&nbsp;topical sketch comedy&nbsp;featuring a 20-something Rowan Atkinson. Following were Father, Dear Father (January&nbsp;1982;&nbsp;a dad with two teenaged daughters); Doctor in the House (March&nbsp;1982;&nbsp;medical student hijinks); Bless Me, Father (October&nbsp;1983; adventures of an Irish Catholic priest); and The Bounder (November&nbsp;1984;&nbsp;To the Manor Born&rsquo;s Peter Bowles as an ex-con).
One of the more notable imports debuted in November&nbsp;1985:&nbsp;Yes, Minister and its sequel Yes, Prime Minister took a comedic look at British politics. A&nbsp;year later,&nbsp;the long-running&nbsp;WWII-era comedy Allo, Allo! came to WILL-TV. Set in occupied France, the series continued to produce new episodes into the early '90s.
The late &lsquo;80s were a time of relative obscurities such as Fairly Secret Army and Don&rsquo;t Wait Up (both May&nbsp;1987); Fresh Fields and its follow-up, French Fields (October&nbsp;1987); The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 &frac34; (April&nbsp;1988); and Executive Stress (July&nbsp;1989) starring&mdash;you guessed it&mdash;Penelope Keith!
Up until 1989, Britcoms were primarily&nbsp;a weekend thing on WILL-TV, but that changed in February of that year when Good Neighbors began airing weeknights at 10:00 pm. And then, on July 3, 1989 (a few months after I came to work at WILL-TV), a little comedy called Are You Being Served? was introduced. You may have heard of it.http://will.illinois.edu/tvworthblogging/post/the-history-of-britcoms-on-will-tv-part-two
Thu, 05 Mar 2015 07:00:00 -0600{pre_genre}Media and journalismThe History of Britcoms on WILL-TV (Part One)http://will.illinois.edu/tvworthblogging/post/the-history-of-britcoms-on-will-tv-part-oneTo absolutely no one&rsquo;s surprise, WILL's&nbsp;first British comedy was Monty Python&rsquo;s Flying Circus, debuting Saturday, March 8, 1975. We were a little late to the party, as many public TV stations had begun airing the show the previous fall. Still, we gave it a big push with a double-paged spread in our early, pamphlet-sized Patterns program guide.
&nbsp;
And now for something completely&hellip;the same. Python aired steadily on weekends over the next several years, and in October&nbsp;1978 it even enjoyed a brief run weeknights at 10:00 pm. (It was displaced from that slot by, of all things, The Dick Cavett Show.)
That same month&mdash;October 9&nbsp;to be exact&mdash;saw the premiere of Fawlty Towers. A more traditional situation comedy, it starred popular Python alum John Cleese as Basil Fawlty, the harried, manic proprietor of a resort town hotel. Despite being a perennial top-5 pick in lists of all-time great Britcoms, it didn&rsquo;t even rate a mention in Patterns!
That fate didn&rsquo;t befall its replacement, the sketch comedy series The Two Ronnies, starring Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett. It received a full-page article for its debut on July 7, 1979.
&nbsp;
In November of that year, one of my personal favorites came to Sundays on WILL-TV. The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin starred Leonard Rossiter as a middle-aged middle manager with a soul-crushing job who faked a suicide and employed a variety of disguises in a search for happiness.
And that was it for the '70s: four series spread over five years. We were a long way from Britcom Saturday Night. Next time, I&rsquo;ll look at the &lsquo;80s and the ascendance of Penelope Keith.http://will.illinois.edu/tvworthblogging/post/the-history-of-britcoms-on-will-tv-part-one
Thu, 19 Feb 2015 12:01:00 -0600{pre_genre}Media and journalismThis Acorn Falls a Little Bit Further from the Treehttp://will.illinois.edu/tvworthblogging/post/this-acorn-falls-a-little-bit-further-from-the-treeEarlier this week, NPR&rsquo;s Morning Edition presented a story about the new season of Foyle&rsquo;s War, a British detective drama that has aired in the US as part of PBS&rsquo; Masterpiece since 2003. But these three stories&mdash;said to the be the final episodes&mdash;aren&rsquo;t airing on WILL-TV&hellip;yet. (You will get to see them, but more on that in a moment.)
For the next few months, they&rsquo;ll be available exclusively via the Acorn TV online streaming service. That&rsquo;s because Acorn bought all rights to Foyle&rsquo;s War and paid for the production of these last installments. It&rsquo;s part of their bid to become, as their CEO said in the NPR piece, &ldquo;the primary destination for British mystery and drama television in North America.&rdquo;
Similarly, Acorn now also owns a controlling interest in Agatha Christie&rsquo;s literary estate. And that led to an unusual situation last year, centered around the long-running series of Poirot adaptations starring David Suchet.
The final season of Poirot comprised five episodes, but only two of them aired in their traditional Masterpiece home. The remainder, including the finale &ldquo;Curtain,&rdquo; debuted on Acorn TV and were never part of PBS&rsquo; national schedule. According to an October article in the public broadcasting trade publication Current, that was due to a disagreement over streaming rights. Acorn naturally wanted to recoup their investment by using Hercule&nbsp;Poirot&rsquo;s (40-year-old spoiler alert!) demise to entice new subscribers to Acorn TV; PBS wanted to offer it for free via their own video portal.
The only reason that you saw those Poirot mysteries on WILL-TV last November/December was that we purchased broadcast rights directly from Acorn. I was initially hesitant and frankly, more than a little annoyed to be paying extra for content that &ldquo;should&rdquo; have been part of Masterpiece, but I also felt that&mdash;as public TV was the home for Poirot for most of two decades&mdash;we had an obligation to bring these to you.
And now we&rsquo;re in the same situation with Foyle&rsquo;s War. We have acquired broadcast rights for these final three shows, and they will air sometime in May. Before that, we will present a special preview, Foyle&rsquo;s War Revisited, on Sunday, March 8 at 8:00 pm.
Both Poirot and Foyle&rsquo;s War were unexpected, additional costs not initially part of our 2015 budget. They represent part of our commitment to those who choose to spend their time with the WILL stations. I hope that you will tune in for them, and that we can count on your continued financial support of our program services.http://will.illinois.edu/tvworthblogging/post/this-acorn-falls-a-little-bit-further-from-the-tree
Thu, 05 Feb 2015 07:00:00 -0600{pre_genre}Media and journalismPublic TV Challenged by Indie Filmmakershttp://will.illinois.edu/tvworthblogging/post/public-tv-challenged-by-indy-filmmakersAn article in the trade publication Current describes a recent summit in which filmmakers challenged PBS and WNET (the primary public TV station serving New York City) to step up their commitment to independently-produced documentaries, especially those that air as part of the series POV and Independent Lens.
It was sparked by WNET&rsquo;s announcement in December that it would remove those series from its main channel to a secondary station with a smaller broadcast coverage area. Understandably, filmmakers were upset by this downgrade in the country&rsquo;s largest television market.
Now, it&rsquo;s well within WNET&rsquo;s rights to make this change. The relationship between PBS and its member stations is very different from that of a commercial network such as ABC and its local affiliates. We pay for PBS&rsquo; program service; in the commercial model, stations give up a portion of their broadcast day to a network in exchange for higher potential advertising revenues. Furthermore, the US public broadcasting industry is fiercely protective of maintaining local control. The result is that we can run PBS&rsquo; national programming whenever we want&mdash;within reason.
This obviously makes it hard for producers to promote their shows, especially if a significant percentage of PBS stations choose to move them to various other days and times. For that reason, PBS has negotiated some &ldquo;common carriage&rdquo; rules that allow them to designate a set number of program hours each year as protected programs that must premiere on the evening of their nationally scheduled airdate. (Even there, there&rsquo;s a lot of wiggle room.)
However&mdash;and to bring us back to the complaints of the filmmakers&mdash;neither POV nor Independent Lens regularly enjoy that &ldquo;common carriage&rdquo; designation. Certain high-profile films might, but as a rule, stations are free to do with them as they will. And stations do, because for the most part the audience for such content is considerably smaller than that for such PBS mainstays as Masterpiece, Nova or Antiques Roadshow.
Now, here at WILL we generally stick with the national scheduling of the independent film showcases, airing them on Monday nights after Antiques Roadshow. To be honest, I&rsquo;m not convinced it&rsquo;s the best night for them. Roadshow is intentionally broad-appeal fare, and it consistently pulls in one of PBS&rsquo; largest audiences. By their very nature, POV and Independent Lens tell challenging, sometimes harrowing stories. It&rsquo;s an awkward fit.
Yet I stand by them, and here&rsquo;s why. It&rsquo;s because this is who we are. This is what we do. Public television exists to be a haven for content which may not be commercially viable. Granted, we couldn&rsquo;t keep going without popular programming that encourages viewers to become members. But stories of unusual perspectives and uncomfortable truths need a home, and they&rsquo;re not finding it on cable or satellite. (IFC now airs repeats of Batman.) It belongs here, and it deserves to air in prime-time.http://will.illinois.edu/tvworthblogging/post/public-tv-challenged-by-indy-filmmakers
Fri, 23 Jan 2015 11:48:00 -0600{pre_genre}Media and journalismAnother Glass of Summer Wine?http://will.illinois.edu/tvworthblogging/post/another-glass-of-summer-wineCould Last of the Summer Wine make a comeback? This British comedy favorite (which airs weeknights at 10:00 pm on WILL-TV) ran for a record-breaking 37 years before its 2010 cancellation. And&nbsp;if producer Alan J.W. Bell can convince fans around the world to chip in, there may be more misadventures to come.
The UK publication Daily Express reported that Bell, along with Summer Wine actors Ken Kitson and Louis Emerick, are attempting to launch a spin-off series based on police officers Cooper and Walsh. According to the article, they intend to finance it through crowdfunding.
Crowdfunding&mdash;the practice of calling on thousands of individual donors to provide seed money for a project&mdash;has been all the rage as of late. One of its most notable success stories was the campaign to revive the cult TV detective series Veronica Mars as a big-screen film. More than 91,000 fans backed it to the tune of $5.7 million. That the resulting movie made a mere $3.4 million during its theatrical run was somewhat beside the point, as the production budget had already been covered.
So, there&rsquo;s precedent for this sort of thing. Time will tell if Summer Wine fans can muster the necessary financial resources.
Bell and Kitson both have had a relationship with WILL-TV. Alan has visited the station several times, and has conducted tours of Summer Wine locations in Holmfirth, England, where WILL members had the chance to meet Kitson in person.
I went on the 2011 England tour, and I remember Alan being very excited about the possibility of a Cooper and Walsh spin-off. It sounds as if he&rsquo;s making every effort to keep the project alive, and I wish him all the best!http://will.illinois.edu/tvworthblogging/post/another-glass-of-summer-wine
Fri, 17 Oct 2014 11:18:00 -0500last of the summer wine{pre_genre}Media and journalismMoone Over Irelandhttp://will.illinois.edu/tvworthblogging/post/moone-over-irelandWhile our annual Great Britcom Vote gives WILL-TV viewers the chance to select a favorite British comedy for our schedule, it also allows me to test-drive some new shows. The winner of our last Vote was old standard The Vicar of Dibley (returning this January), but I was charmed by a relative newcomer, the coming-of-age misadventures of Moone Boy.
Strictly speaking, Moone Boy is an Irish comedy (Ircom?). It&rsquo;s a semi-autobiographical story co-written by comedian Chris O&rsquo;Dowd, whom U.S. audiences may recognize from the hit film Bridesmaids. O&rsquo;Dowd plays Sean, the imaginary friend of 11-year-old Martin Moone. With Sean&rsquo;s fitfully helpful advice, Martin navigates the perils of growing up.
It puts me in mind of the classic holiday film A Christmas Story, with less Ovaltine and more men in woolen knit caps.&nbsp; It&rsquo;s nostalgic without overlooking that childhood can be a time of overblown traumas and ridiculous schemes.
Moone Boy joins the Britcom Saturday Night schedule on November 8 at 8:30 pm, following As Time Goes By. I hope that you enjoy it as much as I do!http://will.illinois.edu/tvworthblogging/post/moone-over-ireland
Fri, 10 Oct 2014 14:40:00 -0500britcom saturday night, moone boy{pre_genre}Media and journalismProgram Previews from the PBS Annual Meetinghttp://will.illinois.edu/tvworthblogging/post/program-previews-from-the-pbs-annual-meetingEarlier this month I attended the PBS Annual Meeting in San Francisco. In previous years, I&rsquo;ve come back with all manner of news about upcoming series, but due to inclement weather at O&rsquo;Hare Airport, I wound up missing much of the first day of the conference.
Happily, I can share with you some updates about new dramas, some surprising performances, a very odd kids&rsquo; show, and&mdash;just possibly&mdash;the return of Sherlock Holmes&rsquo; nemesis! Read on!
The PBS Arts Fall Festival returns on Friday, September 26, and this year&rsquo;s offerings will include Live from Lincoln Center&rsquo;s presentations of &ldquo;Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street&rdquo; starring Emma Thompson and Bryn Terfel;&nbsp;and &ldquo;The Nance,&rdquo; a drama about burlesque performers starring Nathan Lane. Austin City Limits will celebrate 40 years of concerts, and the San Francisco Opera will bring us a new production of the Gershwins&rsquo; &ldquo;Porgy and Bess.&rdquo;
This December, Bing Crosby croons in an American Masters profile. Other arts highlights in the season to come include James Earl Jones and Angela Lansbury in &ldquo;Driving Miss Daisy;&rdquo; another series of Shakespeare Uncovered; and, in what may be the oddest pairing ever from PBS, Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga in Concert.
Speaking of odd, PBS Kids will become very strange indeed when a new live-action series, Odd Squad, premieres this November. Olive and Otto are agents of a secret organization that investigates weird happenings which invariably involve math concepts. Think &ldquo;Men in Black,&rdquo; only with kids in all of the roles. The preview clips were hilarious, and if, like me, you miss our '80s show Mathnet,&nbsp;Odd Squad may be for you.
Some of the most exciting program highlights naturally involved our Sunday night dramas. Both Downton Abbey and Mr. Selfridge will, of course, be returning in 2015. Other Masterpiece miniseries coming next year including a new eight-part adaptation of Poldark; Wolf Hall, a fictionalized biography of 16th Century English statesman Thomas Cromwell; and Indian Summers, set in 1930s India during the decline of British power.
Prior to the drama presentation, many of those in attendance received the following mysterious e-mail:
Purporting to be from Sherlock's rival, the late James Moriarty, it seemed to presage an announcement about a forthcoming season of the detective series (which ended with a similar message). Unfortunately, while Moriarty's "Do you miss me?" taunt did indeed come up on the big screen in San Francisco, the dastardly villain was just a tease. Current rumor has it that we won't see the fourth series of Sherlock before 2016. Though with both Sherlock and Moriarty, it's best not to assume the obvious!http://will.illinois.edu/tvworthblogging/post/program-previews-from-the-pbs-annual-meeting
Thu, 29 May 2014 18:10:00 -0500{pre_genre}Media and journalismHappy Anniversary to Me!http://will.illinois.edu/tvworthblogging/post/happy-anniversary-to-meIt was 25 years ago today (April 21) that I joined the WILL team. So much has changed since then...for me, for WILL, for the broadcast industry. It's my anniversary, and since there's unlikely to be cake,&nbsp;please indulge me in a look back!
I arrived at WILL-TV in 1989 as a mere babe of&nbsp;24&frac34; years. Prior to that I'd had only 18 months of broadcasting experience, wearing&nbsp;several hats&nbsp;at&nbsp;WYIN-TV, a small public television station in Merrillville, Indiana. My familiarity with the peculiar traffic software used by both stations helped me land the traffic manager job at WILL.
Back then, WILL-TV was housed in a hodgepodge of repurposed buildings.&nbsp;The programming and engineering departments were quartered in a dilapidated&nbsp;former bakery that connected to two other structures.&nbsp;While the attached TV studio had&nbsp;been built expressly as a broadcast facility, the front office and development staff were housed in...a house. You'd pass the porch swing, walk in through the front door and find the receptionist sitting in what had once been a living room.
The complex as a whole may--or may not--have seen better days. The bakery smelled funky, and it leaked. Ceiling tiles would&nbsp;come crashing down. My supervisor and I made a pact: she would deal with the spiders, and I would handle the mice.
The remaining TV staff worked out of houses and storefronts dotted around the immediate neighborhood, and WILL Radio was halfway across the University of Illinois campus in Gregory Hall. Volunteering to work the radio pledge drive meant a mile hike both ways.
It took a full decade before we all came together in&nbsp;our current facility at Campbell Hall, built directly behind the old bakery. My office is literally a couple hundred feet from where I started out 25 years ago. (The painting of the old WILL-TV house&nbsp;at right was given to us in 1982 by artist Carolyn Faucett Knox, and still hangs in the Campbell Hall stairwell.)
TV operations were different back then. Videotapes were 10 lb. reels contained in plastic platters, and movies arrived on 16 mm film. Our between-show graphics were slides. We signed off about 12:30 am (to the tune of "By thy rivers gently flowing, Illinois, Illinois") and returned at 6:45 am with AM Weather.&nbsp;
There were two standing sets in the studio: the homey "study" from which Thomas Guback hosted our film showcase Silver Screen, and a replica of the "123 Sesame Street" brownstone used for&nbsp;live pledge breaks during our daytime kids' programming. Back then, one of our pledge "talents" was a furry humanoid named "Clifford" who bore a resemblance to a certain cookie-munching Muppet, but for legal reasons wore an oversized bowtie and purported to be a (presumably distant) cousin. The role was vacant, and as a lifelong ham, I jumped at the chance to don the blue fur.&nbsp;
So much has changed since then. These days I'm the "content director" for both WILL-TV and Radio, and work alongside the FM classical music hosts.&nbsp;WILL-TV broadcasts three simultaneous 24-hour channels.&nbsp;Most of the shows we archive&nbsp;reside on file servers. The study and&nbsp;brownstone sets were dismantled. "Clifford" was buried in an unmarked, shallow grave. The leaky bakery&nbsp;met with a wrecking ball, and only a few of us remain who remember afternoon breaks&nbsp;on the porch swing.&nbsp;&nbsp;http://will.illinois.edu/tvworthblogging/post/happy-anniversary-to-me
Mon, 21 Apr 2014 07:00:00 -0500{pre_genre}Media and journalismWhen “PBS” Isn’t PBS (Part 2)http://will.illinois.edu/tvworthblogging/post/when-pbs-isnt-pbs-part-2Previously I wrote about how people misuse &ldquo;PBS&rdquo; and &ldquo;public television&rdquo; as interchangeable terms. Most of the time it&rsquo;s a form of shorthand, or perhaps a misunderstanding of the crazy quilt of stations, producers and distributors that make up the U.S. public television industry. Sometimes, I suspect, it&rsquo;s done on purpose by those with an agenda to pursue.
Earlier today I was directed to The Huffington Post, which took a break from reporting on &ldquo;sideboob&rdquo; sightings to post a column sensationally titled &ldquo;Why is Public Television Against Public Schools?" That&rsquo;s a doozy of a loaded question.
The article itself was advocating on behalf of a documentary entitled Go Public: A Day in the Life of an American School District, which will be offered later this month by the National Educational Television Association (NETA).
There&rsquo;s nothing wrong with seeking wider exposure for a worthy program, but the column gets there by way of accusations of bias. For example:
&ldquo;Perhaps the most egregious example of PBS's unfair and unbalanced approach to public schools is its hyper-support of Waiting for Superman."
The latter was a 2010 documentary from director Davis Guggenheim, who also brought us An Inconvenient Truth. It&rsquo;s about problems in the U.S. public school system, and it&rsquo;s not without controversy. I have no intention of weighing in on the topic of public vs. charter schools, and that's not why I'm bringing up all of this.
It's just that I was puzzled by the mention of &ldquo;hyper-support&rdquo; on the part of PBS. I couldn&rsquo;t remember any unusual coverage of Superman beyond what one might expect regarding an award-winning film sparking a public debate.
I did a bit of digging, and turned up all of three PBS programs which devoted segments to the film: a 2010 episode of Need to Know, a 2010 episode of PBS Newshour, and a 2011 episode of Charlie Rose. A search of PBS.org resulted in a handful of other hits, all of which were local productions by individual public TV stations. In other words, not produced by PBS, and most likely not aired outside the stations&rsquo; own local markets. (Yes, you can watch them on the PBS Video Player, just as you can thousands of hours of locally-produced content. That doesn&rsquo;t make them PBS shows.)
The column also states that &ldquo;last month the filmmakers (of Go Public) signed a three-year contract with the National Educational Television Association, which is a distributor for PBS.&rdquo; Erm, no...NETA is an organization independent of PBS; it&rsquo;s based in South Carolina and evolved from one of the old regional public TV networks.
The reason that Go Public doesn&rsquo;t yet have wide carriage isn&rsquo;t because PBS or public television has it in for public schools. It&rsquo;s because, as a NETA show, it doesn&rsquo;t have a national airdate. It&rsquo;s offered to individual stations to use as their own local schedules allow. I can&rsquo;t speak for any other programmers, but I&rsquo;ll likely hold it until late summer, when the new school year begins.
Honestly, there are worse examples of&nbsp;this sort of misinformation, but this is the most recent, and I&rsquo;ve already rattled on long enough. What sticks in my craw about it is that any allegation of bias, no matter whether it&rsquo;s on the part of PBS, another distributor, an independent producer or a local station, invariably leads to all of us being painted with the same brush. That&rsquo;s toxic for an organization which depends so greatly on public and political perception. &nbsp;
(Update: Current, the public broadcasting industry's newspaper of record, debunks the HuffPo piece in an article published today.)http://will.illinois.edu/tvworthblogging/post/when-pbs-isnt-pbs-part-2
Tue, 15 Apr 2014 10:51:00 -0500pbs, neta, go public, education, newshour, charlie rose, need to know{pre_genre}Media and journalism